BC Liberal ridings getting almost 75% of road and highway spending

Transportation Minister Todd Stone, right, has been touring B.C. recently, announcing millions in road projects that an analysis shows have disproportionally benefited Liberal-held ridings since the last election. Stone is seen here on Oct. 28, announcing a highway expansion near Prince George with cabinet ministers Shirley Bond, centre right, and Mike Morris, left, who have seen their Prince George-area ridings receive some of the top funding.James Doyle / Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure / Flickr

VICTORIA – B.C. communities represented by Liberal MLAs are more likely to get lucrative transportation projects such as highway repaving, road widening and bridge work, according to a Postmedia News analysis of provincial spending since the last election.

The province has committed $1.3 billion on tendered road projects since May 2013, with almost three-quarters of the money going to Liberal ridings — a rate that exceeds the party’s share of seats and just so happens to be dominated by ridings held by cabinet ministers.

Transportation minister Todd Stone insists politics aren’t a factor in picking projects, arguing that road safety, vehicle congestion and population growth are the key factors in deciding which highways to build or roads to upgrade.

But that hasn’t stopped the B.C. Liberal Party from stuffing its re-election press releases with language that credits its MLAs for securing the transportation money — and suggesting to voters that only by re-electing the governing party in May 2017 can the ridings continue to see the same investment in roadwork, repaving and safety improvements.

Stone just finished a northern tour of the province, during which he announced millions of additional dollars for future road projects.

It’s all part of B.C.’s long history of “blacktop politics,” in which parties of all stripes have used highway upgrade money to shore up votes in key ridings for political gain.

“Blacktop politics knows no ideological boundaries,” said veteran political science professor Norman Ruff, who notes the practice dates back to the 1950s when B.C.’s Social Credit government rapidly expanded the provincial highway system.

“It’s straight what-have-you-done-for-me-lately politics,” Ruff said.

The transportation project list was compiled using publicly available data by Stone’s ministry, at Postmedia’s request, and details the construction costs on 439 road and bridge projects tendered and built in 56 of B.C.’s 85 ridings since the May 2013 provincial election. Projects include repaving, new road construction, lane widening, median installation, rock wall stabilization, bridge rehabilitation, overpass work and merge lane improvements.

The list excludes many Lower Mainland and Greater Victoria ridings, where the roads are often municipal. And it doesn’t include design work, land acquisition or projects tendered before the May election, such as the $1.4-billion Evergreen Extension for the SkyTrain system (located mostly in NDP-held ridings), or projects that have yet to be tendered, such as the $3.5-billion George Massey Bridge (located in Liberal-held ridings).

The Liberals hold 55 per cent of all the ridings in the legislature, but control 70 per cent of the ridings that received transportation projects, worth 76 per cent —around $980 million — of the $1.289 billion in funding.

The NDP, which controls 41 per cent of the house, had 29 per cent of the ridings on the transportation construction list, worth 23 per cent of the funding (approximately $296 million).

Delta South, the riding of independent MLA Vicki Huntington, received $13 million. Peace River North MLA Pat Pimm resigned from the Liberal caucus Aug. 16 amid assault allegations, but the riding’s projects were all funded when he was a Liberal.

The seven ridings with the most funding are all Liberal, including the top riding of Fraser-Nicola, held by Liberal caucus chairwoman Jackie Tegert. The Liberals won that seat from the NDP by just 614 votes in the last election and, since then, the government has spent $113 million there on road projects.

Projects there included $12.6 million towards the realignment and passing lane construction on Highway 3, south of Princeton, and $7.8 million toward four-laning Highway 97, between the 74-mile mark in Tegert’s riding and the 76-mile mark in neighbouring Liberal MLA Donna Barnett’s Cariboo-Chilcotin riding. Other projects included resurfacing, resealing, animal fencing, decommissioning an old bridge, widening lanes and rock slope stabilization.

Tegart’s riding does hold a significant amount of major highway infrastructure, including part of the Coquihalla Highway, Highway 5 from Merritt to Kamloops, Highway 5A to Princeton and Highway 97C to Kelowna.

The top of the list — where most of the infrastructure money is allocated — includes cabinet-held ridings, such as Peace River South (education minister Mike Bernier), Prince George-Valemount (jobs minister Shirley Bond) and Kamloops South-Thompson (Stone).

But that’s just a coincidence, says Stone.

“In highways it has got to be first and foremost about safety and collision statistics, and where are we going to get maximum bang for our buck in terms of safety and reducing the number of collisions,” he said.

Other important factors, Stone said, include volume and congestion, population growth and fixing any delays that impact the movement of goods or the economy.

“The vast majority of ridings we (Liberals) represent tend to have a lot of highway in them,” he said.

“When you look at the map and stand from a 1,000-foot view, most of our seats are in the Interior and suburban areas of the Lower Mainland and it tends to be a tremendous highway network through those ridings in comparison to most of the NDP ridings, which tend to be in more tightly urban centres.”

But that has not stopped the governing party from claiming the improvements are a result of voters electing Liberals such as Cariboo-Chilcotin’s Barnett in their ridings.

Premier Christy Clark surveys one of B.C.âs many road improvement projects, during a stop in the 2013 election campaign in Delta. Since winning re-election, critics say her government has engaged in ‘blacktop politics’ by approving more road work in Liberal ridings than those held by the NDP.

“Barnett’s strong voice in government has delivered significant investments for the unique, rural communities she serves,” reads a Liberal press release announcing Barnett’s re-election bid. “$21.6 million for widening and four-laning a section of Highway 97 south of Williams Lake … ongoing investments in road upgrades to Highway 20 benefiting Cariboo-Chilcotin communities.”

Barnett — who was recently promoted to minister of state for rural economic development — made no apologies for lobbying the minister on behalf of her constituents, who consider highway upgrades a key issue.

“I can tell you, I make a lot of inquiries, I talk to my constituents and I talk to my ministers,” she said. “If you work well as a government and are continually at the table with the concerns for your constituency, you get lots of successes.”

A Liberal re-election announcement for Kelowna-Mission MLA and forests minister Steve Thomson described him as “instrumental in a number of critical infrastructure, housing and recreation projects” including $36 million for six-laning Highway 97 through Kelowna.

The party said Langley MLA Mary Polak, B.C.’s environment minister, had “fought hard for the priorities that matter to Langley voters including … 203rd & Mufford overpasses” worth roughly $22 million, which was the riding’s only project.

That’s all just “MLA advocacy,” said Stone.

“The balance you try to strike there is recognizing that’s the MLA’s job, to advocate for their constituents here in their region, but that advocacy has to be taken into the broader context,” he said.

But the NDP says the funding list shows “blatant” favoritism for Liberals. New Democrat critic Claire Trevena argued that her party’s coastal ridings have vast stretches of road that deserve equal treatment.

“They are picking and choosing where they think it’s to their advantage,” Trevena said of the Liberal government. “Just the fact that blacktop politics is the de facto way of doing politics, it’s really very sad and I’d have hoped we’d gone beyond that.”

Stone said a fairer way to analyze transportation funding would be to include all projects announced (not just those tendered), as well as any money for expanded B.C. Transit bus service, bike lanes and other major multi-billion urban rapid transit projects.

Bike lanes, bus service and public transit disproportionally benefit NDP-held ridings in urban centres such as Greater Victoria and Metro Vancouver, said Stone.

NDP MLAs including party leader John Horgan directly lobby for transportation projects in their ridings as well, said Stone. He named several projects not on the list that benefit NDP ridings, including the planned $85-million McKenzie interchange in Greater Victoria and $34 million in upgrades to the Island’s Malahat Highway.

Nor are the NDP immune to the lure of transportation projects during an election. Horgan promised this week that if voters elect his party “we will four-lane Highway 1 from Kamloops all the way to the Alberta border,” a route that runs through Liberal ridings.

As well, the previous NDP government appeared to practise blacktop politics in the 1990s.

There was the $1.2-billion highway on Vancouver Island that critics said wasn’t needed but just so happened to benefit strong New Democrat ridings. Former premier Glen Clark built the original SkyTrain line (and Bombardier construction plant) through seven NDP-held ridings — prompting a Province editorial that dubbed it the “Vote-Buying Express” and an attack from then opposition Liberal MLA Christy Clark, who said it had “been designed and planned almost solely on political considerations.”

Blacktop politics have a long history in B.C., where governments of varied political stripes have used the vast discretionary pot of transportation money to build and upgrade roads in communities where the governing party needs votes.

Perhaps the most notable example was Social Credit Highways Minister Phil Gaglardi in the 1950s, who launched B.C. into an unprecedented road-building project through the province’s Interior that took in many areas in which the Socreds had their strongest support.

“It’s not 1955. Phil Gaglardi is not the transportation minister,” responded Stone, who now represents Gaglardi’s Kamloops-area riding.

The old Gaglardi definition of blacktop politics has changed with B.C.’s growing rural/urban divide, as cities become less interested in highways and more interested in buses, rapid transit lines and bike lanes, said Ruff.

“Up country it’s still important, in terms of major economic links between various parts of the province,” said Ruff. “But today it has a 1960s ring to it and in the urban areas, where most of the population are now, that style of politicking is being replaced with a concern for more effective public transit.”

Political interference is less likely today due to increased transparency, said Stone.

“Today there is a tremendous amount of transparency and accountability that’s built in,” he said.

“All of the projects we move forward with are all public knowledge, the information is all posted, the tendering is a very rigid process and anyone, any citizen can go out there and add up the value of projects and overlay whatever indicators they want on that.”

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